


we're all strange, but maybe we don't want to change

by mooosicaldreamz



Series: spirits in my head [2]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Gen, featuring monopoly and kevin, sorry there is no kissing, the gen sequel no one knew we needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7873690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooosicaldreamz/pseuds/mooosicaldreamz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You sought comfort in the arms of a woman!” Abby whisper-yells, looking at Erin accusingly. “Our coworker! I know that you two have been flirting for a while now, but come on, Erin!”</p>
<p>“We – we have not been flirting!” Erin says, and then realizes she should backtrack to deny the larger accusation. Patty enters the room just before she can.</p>
<p>“We talkin’ Holtzmann?” Patty asks, and Erin places her hand on her forehead, because she’s surrounded by crazy people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we're all strange, but maybe we don't want to change

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to my baeta of baetas, lynnearlington. watch out for her. she's doing stuff out there.

“Did Holtzmann accidentally transport you to a pocket universe with her?” Abby asks, as Erin climbs up the steps to the second level of the firehouse. Kevin’s playing tic-tac-toe with himself. “I told her that she needed to stop working on that thing until she had a way to get herself back.”

“Sorry I missed the call,” Erin says, by way of response. “I wasn’t feeling well. How did it go?”

“Ghostie is contained as hell,” Patty says, patting their containment unit in the back. “It tried to stab Abby.”

“I would describe it more as though I was a slab of roast beef and it tried to shave off a pound of deli meat,” Abby says, shrugging. She’s holding a bowl of soup, smiling, and Erin almost wants to say something, to talk about last night and how she had grabbed the train from this nice brownstone while Holtzmann snored away. Instead, Kevin slams his fist down into the desk, and actually hits a hole through it.

“The cat won again,” he says, flipping over the paper and drawing another game, seemingly uncaring about the fact that he has just punched a hole through his desk. Abby shrugs, and starts moving back towards Patty, who’s reorganizing their equipment.

“You aren’t contagious with anything, right?” Patty asks, placing one of the proton packs on the wall. “Because this weekend I have to go to my aunt’s third wedding and I can’t be shitting the whole time.”

“I don’t - ” Erin starts to say, before she just sighs. “No, I’m not contagious. Do we have any more calls today? Holtzmann is on a forty-hour power nap.”

“Nah, nothing coming through on the wire,” Patty says, while she’s gingerly arranging the array of gun-like weapons Holtzmann’s developed. “We were going to play Monopoly. Kevin volunteered to be the banker.”

“How’d you know Holtzmann was on one of her genius naps? She only told me about those because she slept under her lab table for four days one time,” Abby asks, setting her spoon down and looking Erin up and down. Erin looked down at herself as well, and it was all normal fare. She had managed to stop by her apartment before coming in. And there were no obvious proofs that she had been at Holtzmann’s house. 

“I came by late last night,” Erin says, deciding to stick with some version of the truth. “She was still working, and when she left she said she was going to sleep for a couple days. It kind of explained a lot.”

“Why’d you come by? You looked exhausted after that class four we got rid of yesterday,” Abby says, and Erin is relieved to see that she’s returning to her soup.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Erin says. Abby knows what that means, and so she doesn’t really reply, just looks at Erin with that mom-empathy look she has.

“Can anyone tell me what this purple goop is?” Patty says, nodding at the beaker sitting on a Bunsen burner in the corner of the workspace.

“It’s ectoplasm repellant,” Erin says, and Patty seems to take this in stride, moving away from the goop. She picks up Erin’s proton pistol and places it on the rack next to her pack.

“Interesting,” Abby says, and she’s staring at Erin now, soupspoon down again.

“Yeah, it sure is interesting for something that smells like a rotten egg,” Patty says, walking towards the stairs. “I’m getting Monopoly from my board game closet upstairs. Y’all want Disney, New York, or electronic?”

“Disney!” Kevin yells, very excitedly.

“So, what class was the haunting?” Erin asks, watching the ectoplasm repellant cook while Abby continues on staring at her. “Were there any anomalies?”

“Here’s an anomaly,” Abby says, poking at Erin with her soupspoon, which is still covered in wonton grossness. Erin swipes at her shirt. “You smell like you rolled around in a dusty old Compaq computer.”

“It kind of just smells like that in here,” Erin says. “We should probably get Kevin to clean it.”

“He would blow up the block,” Abby says. “Don’t talk like that. That’s terrifying.”

Kevin, in the background, hits his desk again, yelling about the damn cat.

“That’s true,” Erin says. As pretty as that boy is, they were probably putting the public in danger just having him hang around.

“You know what else is true,” Abby says, poking Erin again with the spoon. “You slept with Holtzmann last night.”

“What?” Erin asks, looking just past Abby’s head and widening her eyes. “What kind of - ”

“You sought comfort in the arms of a woman!” Abby whisper-yells, looking at Erin accusingly. “Our coworker! I know that you two have been flirting for a while now, but come on, Erin!”

“We – we have not been flirting!” Erin says, and then realizes she should backtrack to deny the larger accusation. Patty enters the room just before she can.

“We talkin’ Holtzmann?” Patty asks, and Erin places her hand on her forehead, because she’s surrounded by crazy people.

“Erin and Holtzmann slept together! Smell her hair!”

Patty does, in fact, smell Erin’s hair. She doesn’t know why her hair is the localized home of Holtzmann’s weird electrical fire scent, but she’s annoyed that it is and jerks her head away.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Patty says, and Erin has a feeling that this is not something anyone has to ask. “Is she like, crazy good in bed? I’ve been wondering. She seems like she’d be wild.”

“Patty! Don’t encourage this!” Abby yells, and Erin stands up, quite suddenly.

“We did not sleep together,” Erin says. “I mean, we did. But we didn’t. It was all very normal and platonic.”

“Plato would laugh in your face, Erin,” Abby says, pointing at Erin’s aforementioned face with vigor.

“You two do flirt a lot,” Patty says, as she starts unloading their game board and various cards and pieces. Disney Monopoly is very purple. “A couple days ago, I heard you guys talking about quarks, and it sounded like foreplay.”

“Yeah, and I heard you two talking about breeding,” Abby says. Erin stares at her.

“We were talking about tritium breeding!” Erin says. Abby looks suitably cowed by this.

“I heard you talking about how much you loved pistachio ice cream,” Kevin says, arriving out of nowhere to begin assembling his banker’s station. He immediately begins rearranging the money by color instead of amount. “She was looking at you. It was cute.”

“Okay, has everyone had their fun?” Erin asks, grabbing for a metal piece shaped like Goofy. Kevin nearly shoves Abby off her chair fighting her over Minnie Mouse.

“Clearly you should have slept with her, because you are wound tight,” Patty says, and Abby sighs.

“Why would it be bad if we were together?” Erin says, looking at Abby. “Not that we are or that I want to be. Hypothetically. In an alternate universe.”

Kevin’s phone pings, distracting Abby from answering. He checks the message quickly, and they all look at him until he notices.

“It was my fact of the day. The Nile is a river in Egypt,” Kevin says, before he starts dealing out the money to them all. Erin is pretty sure that he somehow gets two hundred extra dollars than the rest of them.

“I love you both,” Abby says, after blinking at Kevin for a good few seconds. “I don’t want you guys to get hurt.”

“Considering we’re probably sitting on a nuclear bomb right now, I think it’s all pretty relative,” Patty says. “Kev, do you know what one hundred and forty minus seventy is?”

“Thirty,” Kevin says, shrugging and smiling.

“Oh my God,” Abby says, putting her head in her hands.

“She was looking at me,” Erin says, looking at Kevin. “When I was talking about pistachio ice cream?”

He nods, then pushes his glasses further up his nose, leaning closer to her. He almost leans a little too close, but it becomes clear that he’s not doing it to be weird – he seems to be imitating Holtzmann. His eyes are focused and laserlike, a weird half-smile playing across his face.

“That is pretty cute,” Abby says.

“That is a pretty good impression of Holtzy,” Patty says. “Talk about science or something.”

“Well, when a positive fraction and a negative percent multiply a Google they create a vivant,” he says. Patty nods, enraptured by his weird accent and the way he leans halfway off the table.

“A vivant,” Abby says, to herself.

Erin smiles. The ectoplasm repellant bubbles away.


End file.
